Literature -- Exploring Point of View

Point of View

An automobile accident occurs. Two drivers are involved. Witnesses include four sidewalk spectators, a policeman, a man with a video camera who happened to be shooting the scene, and the pilot of a helicopter that was flying overhead. Here we have nine different points of view and, most likely, nine different descriptions of the accident.

In short fiction, who tells the story and how it is told are critical issues for an author to decide. The tone and feel of the story, and even its meaning, can change radically depending on who is telling the story.

Remember, someone is always between the reader and the action of the story. That someone is telling the story from his or her own point of view. This angle of vision, the point of view from which the people, events, and details of a story are viewed, is important to consider when reading a story.

What is the point of view in "A Jury of Her Peers?" Is it fixed or does it change? Does it stay the same distance from the events of the story, or like a camera lens does it zoom in and zoom out, like a camera lens? Who is telling the story?

[Types of Point of View]

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